The ghazal, many will tell you, is an ancient Persian
form of verse. The OED notes that it is generally erotic in
nature, limited in the number of stanzas, and uses a
recurring rhyme. The western impression, dating back to the
last century and earlier, is that ghazals celebrate love and
wine, but it is interesting to discover that ghazals can be
found today in modern pop music. The Indo-British singer
known as Najma for instance, uses a number of ghazals (in
Hindi if my memory is correct) as the lyrics of her songs.
They are quite haunting, long soft syllables with tabla and
saxophone solos, and gist of the words amounts to no more
than the usual hyperbole of love song lyrics. No Bacchanalia.

In the U.S. of course, people like Bly and Rich have
been the catalysts for the emergence of the new English
language form of the ghazal. In Canada, however, the catalyst
was a transplanted Englishman named John Thompson. He lived
at Wood Point, New Brunswick, not far from what may arguably
be the most famous landscape in Canadian verse, the Tantramar
Marshes near Fundy Bay. Thompson's writing was utterly unlike
the Canadian classics by Bliss Carman and others. He wrote
instead a kind of agonized nature and man poetry, a type of
free verse akin to Galway Kinnell and Ted Hughes, and in the
last years before his suicide he turned to the ghazal.

Thompson wrote a brief introduction to the ghazal in
his posthumous collection Stilt Jack. He notes that ghazals
proceed by couplets, five to a poem &#151; though he
himself ignores the rule &#151; and that the couplets
have "no necessary logical, progressive, narrative,
thematic (or whatever) connection." In other words, a
strong underground, so to speak, connection does and must
exist, but the association is beyond words, beyond our
ability to articulate except insofar as the poem itself
articulates. As Thompson says, "the poem has no palpable
intention upon us. It breaks, has to be listened to as a
song: its order is clandestine."

In the years since Thompson's ground-breaking work,
the ghazal in Canada has been taken up by Phyllis Webb and
Tony Cozier, but never again in the same gut-wrenching,
beautiful, heart-breaking way that John Thompson did. The
form itself is elusive, like trying to hammer down Zen with
three inch spikes. Nice when it works, though.

The trick, in my estimation, is to let each couplet
stand as an object, perfected and twisted to its own
individual end... and then see what calls to it. What voice
in the lonely night would answer such an image? What can you
make from a piece of driftwood found on a deserted lake?

Let go.

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MORE ON GHAZALS

Gene Doty

Since I first read about ghazals in Carol Atkins' Lynx
article, I've pursued information about the form and written
some myself. I appreciate Thomas L. Ferte's piece in Lynx
IX.I. I have a few thoughts about ghazals in English.

First, the linking aspect, which Carol Atkins
emphasized, was what first appealed to me. Without the
"jumping" from couplet to couplet, an English
"ghazal" would only be a poem in couplets.

Second, I've found my ghazals tend to have longer
lines than my other poems usually do. Long lines is a feature
I'd like to see retained in English ghazals (but what counts
as a long line?)

Third, I've not used rhyme. There do seem to be
possibilities in that direction, and I'd like to see some
English ghazals that use rhyme.

Fourth, I've tried the convention of
"signing" the ghazal in the last link and feel
uncomfortable with it. I wonder if that is a convention that
will carry over into English.

Fifth, almost all of the ghazals I've done are
spiritual or erotic (or both) in content and image. John
Drury (Creating Poetry) invites open experimentation. I'd be
reluctant to argue that English ghazals should be limited in
subject matter. Perhaps this point is similar to discussions
over the distinction between haiku and senryu.

I believe Jim Harrison is another American poet who
has done ghazals.

____________________________________________________________

MORE COMMENTARY ON THE GHAZAL

Jane Reichhold

Ghazal writers gather round. Into our dim awareness of
the form comes another ray of light.

First of all, if you have been pronouncing the term as
gay-zaal. It's now wrong. The official Arabic is
supposed to sound like ghuzzle. I don't know about
you, but I am dashed.

When I first heard of the ghazal, it was presented as a
carpe diem poem with wine and women as the answer to
all of man's woes. I could enjoy Rumi's poems but I was soon
tired of the tavern atmosphere of other authors. And now to
know the term is spoken as ghuzzle?

It was the poetry of English writers making free with the
form and introducing wide new subject matter who gave me a
new appreciation of the genre. Eric Folsom of Canada and Gene
Doty of Missouri were among the first ghazal writers to be
published in Lynx. Many readers enjoyed the leaps of
subject matter (rather like a renga) between the couplets and
the parallel lines often echoed the two-line links. The lack
of narrative, the non-linear progression, the ambiguity and
the switches in person and place were familiar attributes
from the renga.

The other day I received Poetry Pilot, The
Newsletter of the Academy of American Poets, and in it was an
article, "Transparently Invisible: An Invitation from
the Real Ghazal" by Agha Shahid Ali, who describes
himself as a "Third-World Muslim" and student of
the 1300 year old poetry form -- the ghazal. (When you read
that word did you say to yourself -- ghuzzle?)

The main thrust of his article was to show us how wrong
and how far from the "real thing" our English
ghazals are. He relates how he views our efforts as
"irritating" and "at best amusing".
According to Agha Shahid Ali, the only "real"
ghazals are those which follow the stringent scheme of the
rhyme within the first couplet and the strict use of the
refrain. The "refrain" is the very last word in the
couplet which, he insists, must be repeated as the last word
in each of the following couplets.

It was also explained how the first couplet has a rhyme
half-way into each of the two lines. This pattern is followed
only in the beginning. Subsequent couplets are bound only to
repeat the last word. For a bad example:

On a day sublime, like this one hereA sample prime of
the art of June

It had previously been my understanding that the refrain
was not a repeat of the same word but the use of words within
the same rhyme family -- June, moon, hewn, etc. (Dig out
the Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary.) It seems there is a
bit more latitude if one could simply rhyme -- far or close
-- the last word of each couplet.

Though it is possible to work out a poem using the same
word in its various uses as the refrain (especially some of
our words with many meanings like strike, love, art, etc.)
there is a limited number of "good" useable words.
Perhaps this is reason enough to get started -- get dibs on
the best ones.

Additional motivation is given by Agha Shahid Ali who is
collecting poems for "an anthology of real ghazals in
English". "No free-verse ghazals." (Emphasis
his) The deadline is September 30, 1996. Send your ghazals to
him at Department of English, Bartlett Hall, University of
Massachussettes-Amherst, Amhurst, MA 01003.

If you wish to read more English translations of ghazals,
two books are mentioned. One by Carolyn Kizer who translated
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (no title given) and The Green Sea of
Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz by
Elizabeth T. Gray. I have just requested these from my
bookstore, so until a report is available from someone, you
are on your own with these.

Your comments and information are gladly accepted by
email to ahabooks@mcn.org.

GHAZALS

For Rose, a 30th Valentine

Gene Doty

Saturn bright in the southern skyafter a gradually
mellowing sunset.

At the banquet, I watch you carefully placethe
trout's skin over its dull eyes.

Our flesh ages day-by-day, changing us into other
beings entirely.

A menu of all the meals we've taken together; only
one thing nourishes us.